(To avoid spoilers, check out “Notarized,” just over four minutes, before reading.)

By D Menzies

It’s spring and the annual Easterseals Disability Film Challenge is back, with this year’s theme being “dramedy.”

The film challenge invites participants who have a disability to be either on screen or behind the camera and to, over the course of about a week, produce an original short film with a few specific guidelines.

Then it’s the awareness campaign stage, which lasts until Sunday, April 12, this year, in which all of the films are available to be screened on the Easterseals YouTube page and shared meanwhile.

In “Notarized,” Emilia Gonzalez (Rubio) is applying for a placard so that she can have more accessible parking accommodations. But Nelva the Notary, played by Kristen Drenning, feels she has to do her utmost diligence in getting medical documentation beyond Emilia, there, in person, making her limb difference clear as possible.

The dramatic comedy may seem inherent, but Rubio, Drenning and company add a lot of nuances that make it sparkle.

“Notarized” speaks to the unique challenges of having a limb difference but, as all of the disability film challenge’s films do, if one is open to it, there’s a universal theme of navigating the world from a vantage point in which someone can be more vulnerable than whatever is supposed to be typical.

“This is my first time participating in the Easterseals Disability Film Challenge and it’s actually my first time ever making a film,” Rubio says. “I follow several disabled artists on Instagram and had seen them post about the challenge last year. I really loved the concept of the challenge for multiple reasons. The main reason being that it supports people with disabilities through its mission and by connecting and showcasing disabled artists. I had always wanted to make my own films, but I never knew where to start.”

The challenge’s guidelines and time-frame restriction really helped her lock in, Rubio said

“The day before the challenge submissions closed I thought ‘Let’s do it!’ And I reached out to my friend Nathaniel Archer, who produced, among many other things, the film. Once he was on board, I knew we could figure everything else together. He helped me from start to finish and I could not have asked for a better partner for this. This experience taught me so much about what it takes to plan and create a film.”

In “Notarized,” Rubio plays Emilia dealing with her plight in a way that feels straight even during the bigger comedic moments, but there’s also subtleties that are honed, in part, by experience.

“I love comedy,” Rubio said. “I started my acting journey by learning improv at the Hideout Theatre in Austin, TX. I immediately fell in love with the art form and it plays a huge role in my life. My favorite thing in the world is to get to be silly with my friends.”

Rubio was excited by the film challenge’s genre being dramedy this year; it allowed her to play with that dynamic she loves in addition to the more serious elements, she said.

“I’ve always believed comedy is best when based in truth,” Rubio said. “I wanted my character to be grounded in reality to showcase the true feelings of having to go through this process. Sometimes it’s hard not to laugh when life keeps throwing obstacles at you, though. In real life, when I called my doctor about writing a note for me and they told me he had left the clinic — he just transferred, don’t worry (see film) — I cried in my car and then immediately started laughing.”

“The sister character, Soledad, played by Iliana Lopez, was important to the genre as well because she provided a contrast to the notary,” Rubio said. “She represented someone who has your back and is ready to jump through as many hoops with you as needed. Oftentimes, it’s easy to feel alone when dealing with things that other people you know aren’t. I don’t personally know very many people with a limb difference, but I have been very blessed by the amount of caring and supportive people in my life.”

As Rubio just mentioned in regard to the film’s doctor scenario at the end, “Notarized” is loosely based on true events.

“It is essentially a more exaggerated version of what I have been through while trying to get my own handicap placard,” Rubio said. “I have been driving for over a decade, but have received conflicting information regarding my qualifications for a placard this whole time. Recently, I decided to try again. The information on the county website had different forms and lists of who did and did not qualify for a placard. The film was inspired by the stress I felt of dealing with contradictory information and truly how silly it felt to me that I needed to go through all these hoops to get to use more accessible spots when needed.

The Pitfalls of Being Earnest

Rubio’s very first inspiration for “Notarized” was imagining the scenario between Emilia and Nelva the Notary.

“I wanted a character who was clearly being ridiculous, but who truly believed they were doing the right thing,” Rubio said. “This was inspired by people telling me that all of the documentation I needed for my disability was to ‘protect disabled people.’ I think people can get so focused on making sure people aren’t getting away with ‘fraud’ that they fail to see the person in front of them.

“When I created the (Nelva) character, I wanted an improviser to play them so that we can play around with the character,” Rubio said. “Thankfully, I have a wonderful friend (Drenning), who is one of the best improvisers I know. I gave her a synopsis of the character and the script and she was able to bring this character to life. She has such a gift for playing characters that are both incredibly ridiculous yet incredibly earnest. And I truly believe the notary really thought they were doing what is best. That’s why she doesn’t seem to have that much remorse for the difficulty she’s causing.”

Roses

Upon my first viewing, I didn’t notice how creatively Rubio and the film’s crew included items specified in the guidelines — like the roses. They utilize such elements, which also include a garage as setting, in way both creative and naturalistic, and for Rubio that’s down to collaborating with her friends.

“The best part about making a film with my friends is that a lot of the film’s elements came from us just having fun together,” Rubio said. “Our original location fell through the afternoon we were shooting so Nate and I readjusted the script, he offered up his house, and ‘Notarized’ now took place in a garage. The background is actually a quilt that my friend Addie had in their house. We thought it was colorful and weird enough to perfectly match the notary’s vibe. The garage door opening came out of someone on the crew saying they thought it would be funny. So we did it, we laughed, and we put it in the film. It was such a fun set to be a part of.”

At the end of “Notarized,” Soledad shows up for her sister with what she hoped would be congratulatory flowers, but those flowers end up being a consolation. But Soledad also tries to get her sister an appointment with a doctor, so Emilia can finally stop getting her hopes about getting the necessary stamp for a placard, and even though the next available appointment is eight months away (at 4:00 A.M. in the morning), Emilia takes it as a small kind of win.

“The original ending of the film was ‘Well I’ve waited my whole life, what’s another 8 months,’” Rubio said. “We cut the line itself, but the general premise remains. Though it is annoying to have to keep waiting, sometimes just getting that next appointment on the books is the win we need to keep going. It also demonstrates the amount of time and effort that goes into getting accessibility accommodations. Doctors are often booked for months so this is just a reality for a lot of people.”

Overall, Rubio said she’s very grateful to be able to participate in the Easterseals Disability Film Challenge.

“It gave me the courage to make my first film and share my own story,” Rubio said. “And I got to do it with some of the greatest people I know. On set we kept repeating the phrase ‘and that’s movie magic!’ It truly does feel magical to get to create and learn and laugh with other people. I know this is just the beginning of my acting and filmmaking career, and I’m looking forward to everything that is to come.”

Find Rubio on Instagram @ a.girl.named.natty, and if you haven’t already watched “Notarized,” see it at www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qptUjxj1-I.

Thank you, paid subscribers, for helping make this article possible.

By the Chilltown Blues

“The Twilight Zone” (1959-1964) came to exist in part because creator Rod Serling had a hard time writing commercially about things he thought were important. He grew up on radio and the best of that medium helped inspire his own storytelling, along with hopes that TV would not become, like radio had, Serling thought, a medium for communicating meaningful ideas reduced to glorified advertising.

As a TV writer, Serling was fortunate enough to have a script produced as part of the Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse (a 1958-1960 variety show from the production company co-created by Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz). The episode was in what would become the fantastical “Twilight Zone”-style and was a success, opening the door to a place that “lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge,” as Serling narrated in the show’s first-season opening.

Serling thought it was horrendous that pop storytelling didn’t generally address the actual unfairness of the world. “The Twilight Zone” let him and other writers do that, still not without struggles, through the science-fiction lens.

One might hope the show’s tale set in Hoboken, debuting in 1960 as its 35th episode, would be among its classics. But there are reasons it doesn’t spring to mind the way the show’s episodes with haunting commentary or winking comfort do. While it flounders as it tries for the latter, “The Mighty Casey” still offers some food for thought. Maybe more than it did when it aired in 1960, thanks to the benefit of hindsight.

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By D Menzies

There’s a strong tradition of dramedies in Australian and New Zealand storytelling — of characters in a given world handling heavy emotional terrain with or amid hysterics.

There’s a philosophy in this approach, I think, that speaks to a preference people have to process things both locally and otherwise. But it’s not an easy thing to balance and still have something that takes enough seriously for that to feel meaningful.

In the first couple of episodes of the Australian dramedy police procedural series, “Deadloch,” as detective Eddie Redcliffe storms around, swearing endlessly, I thought about that here and there. There was something about this series from creators Kate McLennan and Kate McCartney, including Madeleine Sami’s portrayal of Eddie, that kept me watching. It was just hard to not feel like it was more interesting than involving at first.

And then, well, the world-at-large continues to be too much, so Eddie being a sometimes grating whirlwind is still relatively low on that scale or the scale of annoyances one can experience via Chilltown. What I found made “Deadloch” thoroughly involving is the way its many side characters interweave and inform a story about the ways privilege can twist things. Some of these are ways that are relatively more straightforward and others are rarer to see.

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By the Chilltown Blues

Upload work to a social platform lately?

For some people, the idea of that work being used — sans pay — as part of a pool for generative AI to …

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This humble post and comic, sans paywall, is made possible by our paid subscribers. Thank you. Please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber, if you have the means; visit our support page, or, if you like, buy a shirt or something else we’ve designed at chilltown-blues-shop.fourthwall.com.

Chilltown Blues presents:

“What Would Hera Do?”

By Fennel Steuert

Heather had been between jobs too long. Her uncle wouldn’t let her stay home unless she looked for another one.

For her own good, he said.

“You’re 30-something now. You’ve got to start with something and stick with it, even if it makes you miserable. ‘Cause one day …. well, you know.”

She was glad her uncle didn’t say “one day you won’t be miserable,” and it wasn’t like she wasn’t craving for something to just ... work and work well, for her, and with her, so she went back to the mall – to its fortune teller kiosk, where, bank card in hand, she waved her card by a crystal ball.

Fortuna was the bust of a stereotype -- an old gypsy woman with hands that crept over that crystal ball. Heather watched as Fortuna’s gray eyes whirled, her system processing payment of the requisite five dollars.

“What is it you seek, my dear?”

Heather ran her other hand over the plaque where she’d crossed out text about how it works best if you use short, concise questions.

“Is there any job in this mall where I don’t have to let myself be used like …”

“Articulate more quickly, my dear,” said Fortuna.

“Right…like one of those chairs people wedge in the heavy emergency exit … you know, when they go to smoke outside but end up sitting on the chair in the doorway.”

Fortuna shrugged.

“I should take your job,” Heather said. “You are clearly burned out, Fortuna.”

Heather spied a security guard looking down at her from the mall’s second level. They were on to her, she knew, from the tiny acts of Fortuna vandalism. Heather had crossed out the plaque’s words about conciseness several times, most of them back when she worked in the greeting card store and there was a longer line for the new AI attraction.

“Bend because you are not dense enough for the wind to go around you,” Fortuna said suddenly.

Heather resisted a double-take. She found the nearest exit then walked casually to the other side of the mall. She looked up at one of the security drones as it whizzed by, stopped over the four-floor parking garage, and hovered there. A few people were coming in and out of the garage, looking each other over (“Which one of you fuckers is it keeping tabs on?” Heather figured they were saying).

She found another entrance and headed for the mall’s food court.

Heather walked around aimlessly, at first.

Some guy sitting with his girlfriend gave her the once-over, even made eye contact. It had been a while since anyone looked at Heather that way, so it felt sort of good along with the sort of bad.

Maybe you didn’t need five-thousand followers on social media just to be seen, Heather thought heavily. Like what’s-her-face had …

As Heather began looking for “help wanted” signs, in the corner of her eye, someone waved energetically at her.

It was a guy who ran the support group she was in – Alfredo. He was at a table with a woman Heather thought looked vaguely familiar.

Heather went over to them as Alfredo gestured at her.

“Sam,” he said to his companion, “this is Heather. I know her from work.”

“Yes,” Heather said. “I’m also a counselor.”

Alfredo gave Samantha a weird look, and Samantha’s face lifted toward Heather with a “sure you are” nod.

Heather grimaced. There’s got to be some kind of oath where counselors don’t call out the people they’re supposed to be counseling, she thought.

“All right, well … I’m looking for a job. Counseling doesn’t pay super well, as you know. Mr. Fredo.”

Heather turned to leave; even her back felt flushed.

“Hey,” said Samantha. “My family has an eatery here. We can use someone right now.”

The mall’s fast food options rarely had “help wanted” signs, and Heather didn’t feel like asking each one of them if they did, so this, she thought, was as promising as anything.

“If it’ll help you out,” said Heather, “sure, I’ll take a look.”

Heather stood outside Pantheon, thinking it was ridiculous that Samantha had called it an eatery.

Each of the food staff wore a T-shirt with the name of a Greek god or entity on it. The walls were beige, but the tables were white, like they were part of something made from the pillars of a coliseum.

Since when are ‘eateries’ so tacky? Heather thought.

But then Heather remembered when she worked at the greeting card store and people complained about “mall greeting cards,” like there was some classier emporium of them somewhere, and she hated herself for being so snobby.

So Heather took the job to make up for her snobbery … like those labors Hercules had to do after his stepmother tricked him into slaughtering the people he cared about most.

Fortuna will probably love me for this. Being employed again means more money and more fortunes about stuff people with money can do, like buy shit and then really spruce up a garden with it.

In her first week, Heather trained under “Lares” as he instructed her how to wash the produce for the Pantheon’s signature Mediterranean salad -- with the customer’s choice of protein source. All the while, Heather lobbied for a “Herculina” T-shirt.

Lares must have told Samantha, because she showed up one busy lunch period and told Heather that the correct female form of “Hercules” was basically “Herca” or “Hera,” to be super accurate, and they already had a Hercules.

“Huh,” said Heather. She rarely saw the guy with that T-shirt in person, but he popped up on the store’s Nowform social media feed all the time.

Lares had left Heather alone, once again, and she was doing her best to take orders in between running to the kitchen, where Jupiter and Pluto had also jumped over from a different era’s mythology to fill orders for the lunch hour crowd.

“I’ll take the Hera T-shirt then,” Heather told Samantha. “Also, do you have a T-shirt?”

What she meant by that was, I don’t suppose you could be a god/dess and help me out?

“I used to be Diana,” said Samantha. She looked at the woman whose order Heather had begun taking, smiled, and left.

Heather got her Hera T-shirt on the Saturday that was the last day of her workweek. Then she quit without telling anyone. She also blocked Pantheon’s number on her phone. When Alfredo asked her how things were going at the group meeting that week, she told him things were going great. She’d been in and out of groups since she was committed the one time.

She still went out, looked up better made-up gods on her phone, as she sat on benches along various bus stops.

She went to the mall again the next week and sat on a bench alone in her “Hera” T-shirt, and thought about where else she could apply for work.

The next day, she lit up a little when she got a call on her phone. She hadn’t since she and Paul broke up, but it was just Samantha. She pressed red and went to the mall again, this time without being Hera.

Heather dutifully waited in a line of three people at Fortuna’s, then when it was her turn, she waved her bank card and whispered very close to the little audio holes in Fortuna’s forehead:

“I need to get my act together, Fortuna. That’s why Paul dumped me. Well, that and he found someone like me but with, like, more nice things. Less baggage. How do I get or become someone who has nice things? I actually do want to help my uncle out.”

“Try Rising Anchor, the work networking service that can also help you find a partner!”

Heather nodded. “Yeah … OK, I just paid for an ad. But I’m lonely too, so I will do that, Fortuna.”

On Heather’s way home, the mall’s security drone followed her.

It followed her past a house party so loud she heard it from six-hundred feet away – where smoke rose into the sky from a man burning tires as part of his party’s barbecues, as he did a few days every week that wasn’t winter.

It followed her past the fence with the plants so overgrown that she could never tell if the animal that lunged at the wood stakes was actually a wolf, or if it just sounded that way.

She was almost flattered by the drone’s attention. Her phone buzzed with a text and, possibly boosted by the slight unease, her hopes soared that Paul suddenly gave a shit about her again.

But the text was from the Pantheon: “Please return the property you’ve stolen from the Pantheon. The security office will be notified when you’re in proximity of the mall – until you return the property you’ve stolen.”

Whatever, she thought.

The drone followed her all the way home and stayed there past nightfall.

Her uncle went to the window. “I heard about this. They’re supposed to be keeping tabs on quality of life issues.”

She smiled. “Yeah, it’s great they’re finally doing something. Only took most of history.”

“Uh huh.”

When her uncle glanced back out the window again, he sighed. “Spoke too soon. It’s gone now.”

“Oh,” Heather said, trying not to smile. “That’s too bad.”

She went to retire for the night, putting on her Hera T-shirt thinking that Samantha had some damn nerve to mess with the real ruler of their stupid Pantheon.

She would even tell Alfredo that to his face the next day at her group session, if he mentioned anything about Heather not having earned that shirt.

When Heather went to group the next day, the drone came back and followed her so quietly she didn’t even notice until she saw its shadow overlap with hers.

She walked slowly into the building, hoping some birds would pick a fight with it for getting in their way. But no …

Some Hera I am.

Alfredo was even more smiley and weird than usual, but it all seemed dialed up for everybody else. Not Heather.

She stuck around until they were the only ones in the room. Nobody else in the support group really lingered anymore after Alfredo said they were done, like he had anything else to offer that wasn’t mandated – not until someone whose mental health had newly been compromised by life, to the point of an episode, joined the group.

Heather went to the window and tapped the sill. She ducked behind a wall as the drone almost came face to face with her.

Alfredo was looking at her wide-eyed.

Heather smiled awkwardly. “Can we talk for a moment?”

“Sure,” he said. “I have to say it; I’m incredibly disappointed that you let Sam down. She gave you a real chance at something, Heather. There are consequences to actions, as you can see. Why don’t you just return that shirt?

“Why would I want to stop being Hera? I earned being a hate-filled bitch goddess. I had to put up with a week of being behind a counter here …. not in some quaint suburb or wherever Samantha’s family lives. Have you seen their Nowform account?”

“You should still be going to the therapist,” Alfredo said, somewhat sympathetically.

The program only has the one to go around, Heather thought. You should know that.

“The others … they need her more than me,” Heather said. “Please get your girlfriend to let me be drone-free. I need to look for another job.” She turned to the window. “I can’t have this thing following me. How is this shit even legal this far beyond the mall?”

Alfredo began putting his things in his bag. “Sam’s family is a pillar of that mall.”

Heather sighed. “Wait, I remember the ‘shoplifting is out of control’ stuff on the news. And some other stuff about it I had tuned out.”

“You didn’t even give Sam two-weeks’ notice,” said Alfredo. “Just return the T-shirt, Heather.”

“No. They could dock it out of my final paycheck. In fact, I assumed they would! ‘Diana’ is just being a ...”

“Reasonable, mature adult? You can – and should – rise to that by now.”

What would my T-shirt do? Heather thought. Because the real Hera, even if she lost all of her powers, wouldn’t be able to deal with any of this. She certainly wouldn’t give the T-shirt back, though.

Heather nodded to herself, walking slowly away from the counseling center in its building among a busy commercial stretch.

As people who looked up glanced around to figure out who the drone was following, she left her uncle a message.

“I may not be coming home tonight, but I’m with a friend. I’m still looking for a job.”

Heather looked up towns that were 35 miles away – past the quieter, local one where she’d been called a racial epithet once.

She looked up. “What’s your range, oh Diana, goddess of, um, hunting?”

Heather walked to the edge of town, remembering how much Paul, her ex, hated passing through there. He thought of it as a border between high standards and low ones. Heather did too, but in a different way …

She kicked a crushed soda can.

The drone continued to hover over her as she walked and walked.

Heather stopped, looked up and put her hands around her mouth. “Know why Paul hated this spot? Because it marks the border between his trashless quiet town and our trash-filled city.”

Heather heard a bus rear up on the road. She searched in vain for a bus stop nearby to catch it, but there wasn’t any. She covered her mouth as the bus passed and dust flew everywhere.

She was sure someone got a kick out of that inside the bus, which made her kinda glad not to be on it.

Heather figured she was down, roughly, to about 20 bucks to her name and about two hundred bucks she could put on her credit. It hadn’t been long enough for her Pantheon paycheck to deposit into her account.

Paul’s address still came up on her rideshare app. She ordered a ride to his house.

It had been three months since she saw it last; it was almost a second home, then.

Heather never thought of all the places she might have to go where she wasn’t wanted, she’d be going back to this one. But she couldn’t think of a single other address in the next town over.

In her ride’s rear-view mirror, Heather saw the drone circle back the way it came in the purple-tinged sky.

But will it be back for me this far out tomorrow? Heather wondered.

Heather closed the rideshare car’s door as she got out.

It was the only sound, and as the car quietly drove away from Paul’s house, Heather thought Paul might look out and see what this local version of a commotion was about.

Her ex’s bedroom on the top floor of the family’s two-story home was lit warmly against the night sky.

He was probably still dating that yoga instructor, Heather figured.

Heather walked fifteen minutes to the main street. She wasn’t sure entirely, but she’d given the Pantheon her number and she knew the phone itself had like 50 trackers on it. No more just hoping it would go away. She hovered around the trash can in front of a brightly lit sandwich shop, trying to look up how these new security drones worked, but between her phone plan and like one lightning bolt’s worth of wifi reception (goddamn you, Zeus), she couldn’t look up anything.

The thought of giving back the shirt was more tempting, until she realized it was rare anyone called her anymore. So if this was how they were tracking her … Heather let the phone fade to its passcode screen, then she dropped it in the can. Shaking her head, she kept walking until she came upon another brightly lit storefront: Cellular Heaven.

There was a woman behind the counter.

“Hi,” said Heather. “What’s your cheapest, most reliable phone?” she asked. “And also ... are you guys hiring?”

“You’re in luck on the phone,” the woman said. “And yes, we’ve got a vacancy.”

“Turnover high here?” Heather glanced out at the window: still no drone. “It’s high back where I used to work, I mean.”

The woman shrugged. “It’s a quiet gig where you’ve got to hustle for commissions. Getting someone reliable always means a turnover eventually, when they get luckier.”

“Huh,” said Heather. “Well, I’d like to fill out an application. “I still want a new phone, even if I don’t get a job.”

“You’re probably better off applying online,” the woman said.

“I’m a good fortune teller,” Heather said. “The only plan I can afford will definitely make a reliable connection very hard.”

“Ah …” The woman gave Heather a form. “We prefer applications with at least one reference,” she said.

Heather nodded. Her former manager from the greeting card store would do.

When Heather finished the form, she handed it back and tapped the counter a few times. “The bus runs through here, right?”

“It does,” the manager said.

Heather nodded to herself. “So about that phone …”

Cradling her new phone because she didn’t have a pillow, Heather spent the night on Paul’s lawn. It was surreal to her how no one else ever seemed around where he lived — but one of those reliable kinds of surreal, at least.

The drone was not a night owl, but maybe it’d waiting for her at home, Heather figured. She didn’t want to think about that. She just wanted someone to call her and talk to her, or better yet, do that whole in-person thing, but one day at a time, she supposed.

Heather dozed off and woke up with Paul and the woman with five-thousand followers staring at her.

Paul sighed. “Heather, what are you doing here?”

“Hi,” said Heather. “It’s a long story. I became this goddess and you get, well, followers, and one followed me till I got here. Something about this place, though ...”

Paul and his new girlfriend were looking at her like she was pathetic, and Heather almost laughed despite how there was part of her that just wished he’d hug her. But he didn’t see all of her anymore ... he definitely thought she was pretty once, but she’d also been rough around the edges. And she still was, but Heather knew that wasn’t all she was, so Paul, who was really kind of a weenie, anyway, could go kick rocks.

She looked at Paul’s girlfriend, taking note of the resemblance again and remembering how Paul had a sunroof over the driver and passenger seat.

What was one more possible follower for someone with so many? thought Heather.

She pointed toward the route that would get trashier the closer she got to home. She took a deep breath.

“Since we’re all here, can I get a ride? I was only here for work.”

Fennel Steuert is the author of “Magic Flask.”

By the Chilltown Blues

What is there to be said about a city that, according to a report from its mayor, is about 250 million dollars in the red?

The same that can be said about its most challenging section, a place that’s been in the red (and redlined) well before this winter of discontent.

Mayor James Solomon’s report emphasizes the need for truths to be shared, even if they’re hard; doing so would seem to stand as a contrast to what we consider the previous administration’s “let’s keep it positive” copy flow while, according to Solomon’s Feb. 4 report, what was really happening was “depleting reserves, selling public land, and using every trick in the book …” to “avoid making honest decisions …”

That’s still in the air generally, we believe, but what’s also worth noting about this is the simple acknowledgement that no one digs out of a hole by pretending it’s not a hole.

The deepest holes exist at the crossroads of various lines of poverty, and all of that is reinforced by time.

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— Chilltown Blues

This humble post and comic, sans paywall, is made possible by our paid subscribers. Thank you. Please consider becoming a paid or free subscriber; visit our support page, or, if you like, buy a shirt or something else we’ve designed at chilltown-blues-shop.fourthwall.com.

Also note: As featured in our previous story, singer-songwriter Stef C is putting on a show to fund-raise for two worthwhile organizations. It’s happening in JC the evening of Saturday, Feb. 21, and for more details and to RSVP (ideally by today, Feb. 20) for limited seats and more info visit partiful.com/e/BlxxACequJ9v2710HLJ5.

By Chilltown Blues

Last year, Stefanie Carapezza released her debut EP, “Stagefright,” and upon hearing it this year (available on all major streaming platforms), it was too good to not feel like it came out yesterday, so here we are.

Carapezza’s EP opens with “Scorched Earth,” a song that immediately shows the jazz singer’s inflection the singer-songwriter can vocalize in. Carapezza’s voice then rolls on throughout the EP in ways a bit more varied — with rock-, pop- and other tinges bolstered by strong songwriting.

It’s another great example of indie music in the singer-songwriter vein that’s stronger than what carries that label and gets the most streams.

Carapezza, a JC resident, answered some questions about “Stagefright” as she prepared to put together a concert for these challenging times.

“It’s really challenging times,” Carapezza agreed, “and I think more than ever art has become so important and maybe more polarizing because of these events. I want to highlight the Jersey City art community in general is very vocal and active to recent events regarding ICE presence in JC and Hoboken. I am putting together a show with some of my artist friends to help fund-raise for different organizations doing the work of promoting equity and inclusion for immigrants.”

It may be a five-track EP, but “Stagefright” has big arcs that it deftly explores — with “Scorched Earth” being about what it took the song’s narrator to realize her worth. A witch burned at the stake acts as a metaphor for self-actualization after destruction — for becoming a bat out of hell, despite having chronic stage fright.

“The EP collectively showcases my insecurities as an artist and musician because I did start my music journey later in life,” Carapezza said.

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By the Chilltown Blues

What exactly is doomerism?

It’s considered posting or consuming a seemingly endless amount of bad — or maybe more applicably depressing or “negative” — news.

And it’s not just that; it’s doing so with the idea that there’s nothing that can be done about any of the underlying trends this bad news speaks to.

But we’re not sure most entities who endlessly post or consume bad news necessarily do so with any keen sense that it’s part of some “futile” slide downward for society or the world at large.

No, people are more likely to consider anything that speaks to those underlying trends as doomscrolling, when consuming an endless stream of bad news is closer to the way algorithms engage potential readers or viewers.

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By The Chilltown Blues

Let’s say it snows a ton, and the ton falls everywhere in a given area more or less equally. It’s harder for everyone to get around, until property owners start clearing sidewalks and the town itself does so for the roads. Of course anyone who isn’t a property owner doing this helps, but if it’s a property’s owner duty to make accessible paths around property as needed, the property owner with the most resources, or a tenant of that particular property owner’s residence, is probably going to be able to clear the sidewalks around them to the utmost.

Elsewhere, meanwhile …

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— Chilltown Blues

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By D Menzies

Just under a week ago today, Jan. 15, Dallas MC MADuum ShonTé Renae dropped “Queen of da South” on Bandcamp. Among the latest hip hop releases, it stood out for several reasons — not the least being the production that sounds like ‘90s hip hop with a little more polish. It’s also how that fits the lyrical content: the braggadocio ShonTé Renae says has been part of rap since the beginning, in this instance coming with allusions to chess pieces — a pawn and a queen — in a world where people are frequently trying to treat someone like the former.

There’s also very good wordplay. Some songs always stand out depending on the listener, and for this one “Da Top” and “Eye to Eye” drew the most repeated listens initially. But replaying the whole album made lines in other songs pop out because, as is often the case with interesting lyricists, it was hard to catch every bit of wordplay the first time around.

ShonTé Renae was kind enough to answer some questions from Chilltown Blues about this debut album where patience, instead of kingly domination, is a virtue.

“Speaking of patience, I’ve been honing my skills and perceptions about the world as a MC for 11 years now,” ShonTé Renae said. “The majority (of people) confuse confidence as something that’s supposed to be loud and obnoxious, and because I was quiet, I appeared weak and was treated as a pawn.”

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By the Chilltown Blues

This winter, on one of the most frigid nights so far, we’ve seen something walking around Chilltown at night. We thought it was a cat, at first — one of the ones we root for to make it through an extremely cold night or, in the summer, find a peaceful spot in an incredibly loud and hot night.

But even on an empty sidewalk, cats walk around a bit more tepidly than what we were witnessing: it was, in fact, a skunk.

If we didn’t know any better, we might have even said the skunk jauntily crossing a street looked as carefree and purposeful as someone jogging in similar temps.

Skunk sightings are not unheard of in the north Jersey/NYC-area. But nothing in a surface-level knowledge of skunks — one of a handful of animals considered swamp- or river-rats — suggests they’d manage to survive well in a crowded area during a cold winter.

Skunks prefer open spaces, so of all the places for them to be, a densely packed city is not ideal. New York City, for all its density, has much more open parkland for skunks to get a foothold than Chilltown.

So wanting to know how exactly they can fare here, in near-Arctic temperatures, we did our research and discovered how much they fit with what’s already happening.

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By D Menzies

I didn’t hear about it until this week, but I’d be remiss in not acknowledging the passing of Dr. Arline Bronzaft on Oct. 29, 2025.

Bronzaft was a pioneer and humble titan in the field of environmental psychology; she helped write NYC’s present noise ordinances, and her studies informed knowledge about how broadly adverse noise can be along with the inequities that noise pollution can help prosper — like the way noise can help to mask issues that would be completely unacceptable where residents have enough money to ensure otherwise.

Bronzaft’s work also informed knowledge on a tenet of equitable learning: it’s much easier in a quiet atmosphere, whether that be at school or at home.

If you lived in NYC and could get in contact with her it was possible she would go to your noisy neighbor’s residence and try to talk to them about noise pollution.

Yes, really.

I was fortunate enough to be able to interview Bronzaft, who was generous with both her time and thoughts about noise pollution. It’ll always stand as a particular honor. My impression was of someone who was both idealist and pragmatist at once.

Unregulated capitalism has had a way of encouraging noise — both the technology that makes for more noise and people’s seeming indifference, sometimes their seeming pleasure, at other people being disturbed by it.

That’s what made Bronzaft’s work so important; it all boiled down to a very simple notion of how invaluable it is to cultivate a certain level of peace and quiet as a right, rather than a privilege, and how that reflects the way we as individuals and as a society value other people. Or don’t.

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By D Menzies

Nobody read it, comic book writer Christopher Priest wrote of his (1994) 18-issue run on “Steel” for DC Comics; not even editorial, but that’s why it got to be something unvarnished — a run that begins after the character John Henry Irons finishes his solo title’s first era (written by co-creator Louise Simonson) in Washington D.C. Under Priest’s run, Irons has taken his niece Natasha to live with him and his super-powered suit of armor as he settles into Jersey City.

Several years after what would be a relatively short but complete run (storyline-wise), Priest — Queens native, the first Black editor for Marvel Comics, and former driver of a Greyhound bus from Port Authority to Princeton — would look back on it proudly on his blog, calling it wryly cynical.

Steel was originally co-created by Simonson and artist Jon Bogdanove as part of “The Death of Superman” story line, in which four figures claiming the mantle emerge after what would be the character’s temporary death. The embodiment of a literal man of steel, Irons was also obviously (and somewhat cheesily) inspired by the folk hero John Henry, the Black American freedman who beat a steam-powered rock driver at the cost of his life, and whose tale was possibly inspired by a real person — candidates for which include a John Henry born in New Jersey in the mid-1800s and a young Virginia man who worked as a particularly exploited variety of prison-laboring railroad worker until he possibly died during a mountain operation.

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By Chilltown Blues

The Woodstock musical festival of 1969 was supposed to be a benchmark in the kind of diversity still touted today.

But rather than the nearly half a million people who attended it over the course of days being measurably diverse, it was only thought of that way.

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By D. Menzies

You’re in paradise, and as Chilltown rapper Constant Flow says, “It’s like being in Cloud City,” a place above the rest of the world. “Paradise.” What does it take to be there, and what does it take from you?

Questions like that loom large on “The Price of Paradise," the latest album from CF (aka Nelson M).

For those who may not know, Chilltown is a nickname for Jersey City (JC) — which has become a paradise for various real estate interests and anyone with cultural capital (generational or relative wealth, in particular) looking for their affiliate Manhattan, which some of it overlooks.

“Corpse,” the album’s first track, sets a high bar. This is only in part because of the clever wordplay that utilizes “set,” like so: “Let’s go deep and get you highly up … set.”

Thematically the song is about hitting the marks on a checklist of things someone needs before they step out. In addition to establishing a sort of camaraderie to those who can relate to the island of misfit toys (per his reference, tis the season), CF explores being complete — regret-free enough to feel like should that corpse state come he’s checked everything off the list; and that means a commitment to being alive.

It’s also the dissection of a relationship, CF told Chilltown Blues. “I’m dissecting … This is the price of the idea of wanting to live blissfully with someone — that’s the price of paradise.”

It took a few listens for anything else on the roughly half-hour album to sink in as being able to match “Corpse” — the combination of CF’s delivery and Speedy Babyy’s production, and the shift to spoken word at the end, leaves that strong of an impression — but that happens shortly thereafter on songs that take a few listens to unpack because of the many ideas packed into their shorter duration.

“Hillz” is a good example of that, with its rapid-fire delivery and pop culture references. In the song, CF acknowledges those who died on what can be thought of as hills before they were paved over. In a way, he revisits a theme from “Ghetto Mermaid,” on a previous album, “Surus.”

Where is there to go when everyone wants a house on the proverbial hill, and “everyone” is people with what we’ll call particularly great credit scores? (Some people even want a house in JC’s proverbial Hill, but not the figures in “Ghetto Mermaid,” who can’t afford to consider anything else but the sea.)

“Hillz” is a little more of a fever dream where it’s possible to escape somewhere. It relates to the album cover, with its picture taken in a place considered a tropical paradise

“My mother’s family moved from a town named Grito de Lares, where the revolutionary Puerto Ricans tried to rebel against the Spaniards,” CF says. “So my family’s connected to that town. … I wanted to explain to people the beauty of the hills and the price of paradise people have to pay to maintain their identity — specifically the indigenous types and the Africans and the Sephardic Jews because they would not be accepted in the main coastal areas where the main population was at because of who they are. They were willing to live away from where the resources were easy to access because they wanted to keep their identity.”

There’s a few themes interwoven throughout the album. There’s the aforementioned, and there’s also the serpentine natures of the city and the state and the people washing over it; and life and death —specifically trying to stay motivated to live as someone who is a little too aware of everything.

There’s also doing that via what CF has referred to as ‘90s Nel, with that era’s energy and some of the vernacular. It’s sprinkled throughout the album, but “Rage Virus” feels like a particularly good example of that — as the setting for ’90s hip hop was often post-Reagan red-lined, apocalyptic area. Here, the song focuses on a guy in a gated community, CF says, who realizes he’s hardly among angels.

“Surprise Party” feels like it’s about the build up to its last lines, which are delivered like a good punchline on a song that begs the question: who wants to party with you anyway? It’s also about dealing with wanting to celebrate and be celebrated.

“Blast Radius” is about letting some of the people who make your life harder do that to themselves, as that would often seem to be inevitable.

With “Machine City,” another highlight, CF imagines engineers who work on favelas that welcome everyone. In part, because he’s well-read, '“while most self-medicate to deal with themselves, cause they feel dead, I feel alive ...”

Or at least he does before he becomes part of machine city in some way.

“Seraphim” is a bookend to “Corpse,” CF says. With a horn-inflected soundscape, it builds on a metaphor for what something actually is via angels — the way they’re commonly portrayed in pop culture versus the myriad-eyed beings an accurate depiction of their biblical description would look like. But it’s here ’90s Nel resurfaces with a realization he maybe blinded by something that’s much more one-dimensional.

On “CODA,” which features Rian or Duece, CF raps about qualifying for some of contemporary standards of “success” but not being able to benefit from it on a material level; he also raps about how social media clout is “new school crack.”

The song’s second half belongs to Rian or Duece, who energetically takes the torch with words that also speak to minimizing small minds as they imitate a path laced with real pain.

If that’s the landscape, what can you do but ground yourself in a sense of purpose?

Check out “The Price of Parade” on Bandcamp or wherever you stream your music.

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By Chilltown Blues

Ads to buy things accompanied by Christmas music started a while ago, but tis the season in earnest now.

And it would not be unreasonable to say that Reagan’s administration helped ushered in this age of noise and junk. His broad deregulating in favor of a free market opened the floodgates for private monied interests to make everything that underlined the country’s social infrastructure more of a product, rather than something not inherently about profit that benefited a tiny few over the many.

Without those regulations in place, the definition of profit has changed to the point where for the shareholders of a company it should be somewhat exponential. If it can’t be, it should be reconfigured so the cycle can repeat — even if that’s not really sustainable.

But back when the sky was more of the limit in that regard, Reagan’s administration didn’t just disregard two national health crisis with the AIDs epidemic and the War On Drugs largely criminalizing poor addicts of color; it didn’t just deregulate federal environmental standards, including ones for noise; it also deregulated rules that were intended to limit advertising in programming intended primarily for children.

This last one may feel like the least of those by far, but it’s with all the others — let’s also add his administration’s large cuts in education spending — where it all adds to the same hydra.

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